Sandman Mystery Theatre #66

A grinning clown doll, bathed in an eerie red glow and seemingly clutching something in its tiny hands, dominates this unsettling cover for "The Goblin Act Two of Four" — and the rhyming taunt scattered across the image ("Cop and Bop / Laughing Joking / One Will Perish / Screaming Choking") makes it clear this Vertigo series is at its most darkly playful. The photographic cover work by Gavin Wilson and Richard Bruning gives the whole thing a genuinely creepy, carnivalesque dread that suits the mature-readers tone perfectly. Steven T. Seagle and Guy Davis promise a ghastly little fable, and this 1998 issue is the kind of mid-arc chapter that makes you want to track down the rest of the story immediately.